Why intentionally obtaining COVID is a dangerous idea


January 13, 2022 – As Omicron’s COVID-19 cases in the United States have grown to what appears to be new records every other day, speculation is growing among some experts and scientific novices that infection seems inevitable to many.

At a Senate hearing Tuesday, FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock, MD, even told the committee that “most people will get COVID.”

In mid-December, the director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adanom Gebrejesus, Dr, said that vaccines alone would not protect us from Omicron. In late December, an epidemiologist told BBC News: “We have to be realistic; we will not stop Omicron.”

There are now posts on social media resurrecting ideas, such as chickenpox parties, where you deliberately mix with infected people. A restaurant in Italy charges $ 150 for the chance to not only get good wine with your dinner, but also COVID-19.

So, if it’s very likely that everyone will be infected, why not listen to the chatter there, just get infected on purpose and get it over with?

Because it’s a really bad idea, public health experts say.

“No, not everyone is inevitably infected with Omicron,” said Greg Poland, MD, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Mayo Clinic of Medicine and Science in Rochester, Minnesota, and editor-in-chief of the diary. vaccine. “There may be higher levels of infection and higher levels of exposure, but vaccinated, boosted and masked individuals have a very high chance of protecting themselves from infections.

To get infected, you need a chain of events that are not inevitable, he says.

“I think it’s certainly spreading like crazy,” said Aaron Glatt, MD, chief infectious disease officer and hospital epidemiologist at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside, New York. “It’s highly contagious and will affect even the vaccinated and reinforced.”

However, he says, “There is no way to say ‘Everyone will get it.'”

With intensive wards full across the country and tests that are hard to find like truffles, “it’s certainly not the time to raise our hands in the air and say, ‘Everyone will get it,'” says Omay B. Dr. Garner. Director of Clinical Microbiology for the UCLA Health System in California. He’s sending the wrong message, he says.

Saying that Omicron will affect us everywhere means “we have to stop trying to fight it,” he said. If that happens, he says, “you will put the immunocompromised and unvaccinated at risk. It is still a very dangerous disease for people who have not been vaccinated.”

And the unvaccinated, Garner recalls, include “an entire population under the age of five” for whom a vaccine against COVID has not yet been authorized.

The story of getting the goal

The idea of ​​deliberately capturing COVID is also a misguided argument, Poland says.

People may mistakenly assume that what they call “natural immunity” – and what he prefers to call “disease-induced immunity” – will not have any negative consequences, and that once infected, their immunity will be long lasting.

Another problem, says Poland, is the lack of understanding of what “softer” means when it is said that the Omicron is usually softer than the Delta variant. If you are unvaccinated or under-vaccinated and become infected with the Omicron variant, he said, the prognosis is better than with Delta, but you can still get very sick and die.

“I certainly wouldn’t recommend people go out and try to take Omicron,” Glatt said. “If someone gets infected and recovers and does well, it will increase immunity, for example [from] any infection. “But” that means you have to get sick, “and that’s not a good idea.

The other misconception, according to Poland, is that experts already know everything there is to know about Omicron.

That’s not true, he says. He cites recent studies, such as a newly published study by the CDC, which found a higher risk of diabetes after children were infected with COVID-19.



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.